Reading Notes – Playlist as Intervals
Found in: Reading
Mark M., New York
1. Up until this point, intervals in fingers and on keyboard were for both hands. Neil indicates that Playlist as Intervals is a big project. Is there a danger in limiting this project to RH melodies only, causing a gap in time for LH practice? How do you ensure that LH stays up on its skills while awaiting the end of this project?
2. In the training, examples given for translating playlist into intervals are Dreams, Storm, Ode, Dog? and Fluff Pie. How many additional pieces would you typically do before moving onto the next project, reading intervals from the page?
3. Do you limit additional pieces to those that are all white notes 5/5? A number of pieces (Chester, Fur Elise, I’ll Be There, etc.) have melodies with some black notes, and I could see the argument either way, that on one hand perhaps this is a complication that muddies the water of understanding/fingering intervals, and that on the other hand the use of the fingers is essentially the same as if those notes were white and therefore maybe these would be appropriate as additional examples at this stage.
Gordon H., Australia
I’ll answer just one of your questions in the hope that other teachers will be encouraged to answer other questions, since I’m interested to see how people deal with them.
Re question 3, I don’t use pieces with black notes. It could cause some confusion later when seeing how black keys are accommodated in intervallic reading. Not a biggie, but I think it’s best to encourage the understanding that our approach begins on white keys and adds blacks as an additional step.
Here’s another little thought, though – perhaps when you know that a class will be looking at Playlist as Intervals soon, you can give them a 5/5 composition project so they can do that as a Playlist as Intervals exercise. They could also use it later as a transcription project.
Barbara M., New Jersey
Both hands may simultaneously say and “play” the RH melody to keep the LH hand connected to the process.
I have found that for most people the songs you list are enough.